Singing the songs of his father

Nathan Rogers

Stan Rogers’s Northwest Passage is a Canadian classic, a song of nation-building courage and sacrifice that helps define our folklore. In the Canadian folk canon, it’s right up there with Gordon Lightfoot’s Canadian Railroad Trilogy and Ian Tyson’s Four Strong Winds.

Rogers, born and raised in Hamilton, wrote and recorded it in 1981. Less than two years later, he died with 22 other passengers in a fire aboard an Air Canada DC-9 on the tarmac of the Greater Cincinnati Airport.

Stan’s son Nathan was three years old at the time of his father’s death. His memories of Stan are not about music. They are about running errands, going to the grocery store, the day-to-day things of domestic life.

As Nathan grew older, however, his father’s legend grew larger. The four albums Stan released while he was alive continued to gain millions of fans following his death.

And, in a few years, it became apparent that Nathan had not only acquired his father’s stature, but also his distinctive baritone voice.

Nathan could not escape the legacy of his father’s music, so he embraced it.

“When I was learning to play guitar, some of the first songs I learned were from the Stan songbook, Fogarty’s Cove,” Nathan says from the home in Winnipeg he shares with his wife and five-year-old daughter. “I had heard it all my years growing up, so it wasn’t a big stretch to go and investigate the music.”

Nathan moved to Winnipeg shortly after high school to work and study. He became involved in the city’s lively folk music scene and has recorded two albums of his own songs, as well as performing with the roots trio Dry Bones.

In recent years, however, he has toured extensively across Canada, singing only the songs of his father, Stan Rogers. Nathan and his band bring that tour to the River Run Centre on Friday, Nov. 30.

“The Canadian public has responded to this music in a very emotional way,” says Nathan, who is now 33, the same age his father was when he died. “They respond in a way that is linked intrinsically with their personal lives and their sense of Canadian identity.”

“That is such a powerful thing and such a beautiful thing to be a part of.”

One of Stan’s songs that Nathan performs is, of course, Northwest Passage.

Interestingly enough, Nathan was hired in the summer of 2010 to provide the entertainment aboard the cruise ship Clipper Adventurer during a two-week trip across the Canadian Arctic. Nathan singing Northwest Passage was part of the draw.

Partway through the cruise, however, Nathan and the 200 other passengers learned how dangerous the passage can be. The ship went aground on rocks in Coronation Bay. No one was injured, but it took the Coast Guard a few days to rescue them.

“It was amazing,” Nathan recalls. “It was like being in an earthquake. I was hanging out in a hallway just outside the main lounge. It was unmistakable that we had hit something. At one point we’re doing 22 knots across the top of the water and five seconds later we’re at a dead stop and living area starts filling with the smell of diesel exhaust. There was no question what happened. There’s this insane grinding scraping noise.

“They tried to extricate the ship for several hours trying to move it off the rock, but that didn’t work. They called the Coast Guard. It was another couple of days before the Coast Guard came and another day or so before the Coast Guard managed to get us back on to dry land and another day or so before I was home.”

Still, there was no doubt that the 19th century explorers that Stan wrote about in the song had it much worse.

“If you’re going to be stuck some place for two extra days,” Nathan says. “It might as well be a luxury cruise boat. I was eating well and I had somewhere to sleep.”

Nathan Sings Stan — The Rogers Legacy Continues

River Run Centre

Friday Nov. 30, 8 p.m.

Tickets are $37.50, available at the box office, by phone at 519-763-3000 or online at riverrun.ca.